Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill (First sitting)

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th November 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Fleur Anderson]

Q My question is to the deputy commissioner about the Bill’s co-operation framework. I am the MP for Putney, and I have a lot of high-rise buildings, which are at a lot of different stages: some have been remediated, some are ongoing, some have not yet started, and the London Fire Brigade is involved in several of them. One case, which I think is the sharp point of this and a test case for the Bill, is a Barratt Redrow development. Having been decanted for three years, people will be going back next week on the basis of assessments done by Barratt Redrow, but the residents do not have any more trust in the developer because of what has happened. They want an independent assessment to assure them that they can go back, but they are being told that they have to go back or the locks will be changed. It is quite serious.

Do you think that the Bill’s co-operation framework will help? The LFB, the borough council, the local management committee and the developer are all involved in conversations, but who can the residents go to for that independent assessment to be assured that the building is safe? Is there anything more that can be done in the Bill to help in that situation?

Spencer Sutcliff: I think the Bill provides a sufficient framework for the work to be done to clarify the exact position around the responsibilities of each of the enforcing entities. It is not unusual at all for the London Fire Brigade to have protocols and memorandums of understanding with different enforcing authorities. For example, we have a long-standing MOU in London with the local authority around houses in multiple occupation, because we both have enforcement powers under the fire safety order and the Housing Act. It is right and proper that we distinguish the type of building, the type of occupancy and who is the lead enforcing authority. To act at the same time is not good practice; it creates inconsistency and would not be correct.

I think the framework proposed in the Bill is sufficient. We have already drafted an enforcement protocol with the Bill in mind, so the timescale proposed in the Bill to set out that framework is suitable and can be met.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Q I apologise for being late, Mr Chairman; as you know, I was in business questions. I declare my interest as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for fire safety and rescue.

In terms of the fire safety of buildings, are you content that the Bill, as currently structured, is sufficiently robust to achieve the safety inspections and sign-off that will be required in the future?

Dan Daly: One thing we have been really clear about ever since the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire is that a whole-system approach is required to ensure building safety. Dame Judith quite rightly identified the need for the whole regime to be looked at. There are still elements within that—they have been referenced today—around competency, which is still an issue. There are the general skills requirements both across the construction sector and within fire risk assessors; we talked about fire engineering skills and those with the technical ability to address some of the risks that we now face, particularly when dealing with a historical property.

[Bob Blackman]

Q On that point, is there a risk that private developers could get a safety adviser to sign off and that would be sufficient? That was one of the problems previously and, as I read the Bill, it would still be allowed. Obviously, that is a key concern about how we got to this point in the first place.

Dan Daly: It comes down not just to competency; when I talk about competency, I talk about ethical behaviours and how that is controlled through membership bodies and sign-out. I do not think it is an ideal situation. It is certainly a situation that was addressed by some of Dame Judith Hackitt’s comments in that original review.

On the point about a whole-system approach, while the Bill talks about remediation and provides some useful tools, it does not provide the complete answer, because there are historical defects in fire safety that are internal, not just about the external wall of the building. We still find challenges in respect of how those are addressed.

We talked earlier about the suitability of the PAS. The PAS does allow for some weighing up of other features within the building, in terms of how the risk is mitigated. That is a step forward from the combined advice note, which was pretty all-in or all-out and did not allow for some of that balance. But we have issues that are still sitting within the buildings, and there are a number of things we could be doing better and stronger to ensure that buildings are safe overall and to build the confidence of residents, which we talked about earlier.

[Bob Blackman]

Q There are buildings—I can take you to some of them, including around the Wembley stadium area—that have been put up since Grenfell with unsafe cladding. There are huge numbers of them, and they are completely uninsurable and unsaleable for the leaseholders who own them. The reality is that developers have got planning permission, stretched out their development and, as a result, put up unsafe cladding that accorded with the regulations at the time. Is the Bill sufficiently robust to force those builders to remediate their buildings and, going forward, to require them, notwithstanding the fact that they have planning permission and sign-off, to remedy this before they put the buildings up?

Dan Daly: To your latter point, it is the role of the Building Safety Regulator to make sure that these things are built correctly from this point on. The last panel talked about the work in that regard.

I think the responsibilities for remediation are clear in the Bill, which assigns responsibility through the “polluter pays” principle, so it is much clearer who is responsible for repairing buildings. Our ability to enforce that would be improved if some of the protocols were agreed around who collaborates and who leads. I note the work in the LFB around writing protocol at the moment, but elsewhere in the country there are some really ambitious and difficult timeframes; if we press ahead as we are now, something in the region of 157 individual partnership protocols will need to be written so that each regulator understands its role in holding the relevant persons to account. That is a challenge.

While the Bill makes it clearer who is responsible, who is going to lead the charge to hold those people to account could be made even clearer through something like a review of the LACORS protocol that we currently have, to make sure that those things are in place and applied consistently across the country. As I said, I commend colleagues in London for being on the front foot in getting that agreement in place. If that agreement was adopted as a national standard, it would bring some consistency of approach across the country and some confidence in how these things are dealt with.

[Noah Law]

Q I have a couple of brief follow-ups for you, Dan, on the last two questions. First, would some level of independent review or auditing of FRAEWs go some way towards addressing some of the concerns you raised about standards? Secondly, you made the point about stretch targets of 12 months on timing. Would you consider the duty to co-operate a stretch target, or a useful one, in ensuring co-operation between enforcement stakeholders?

Dan Daly: I will pick up on your last question and then hand over to my colleague on the independent auditing, because we have been talking about that. We already have a duty to collaborate, so that is not new, but providing some clarity around how regulators and agencies will work together in a consistent way that is applied nationally will improve it. I am not sure that it offers us individually anything more than we currently have, but across the wider sector, that duty to collaborate is not unhelpful.

Penny Pender: The point in the Bill about solidifying independent auditing is crucial, and I agree with everything that Helen on the previous panel said. That is a really welcome part of the Bill, and it will hopefully assist in these cases. If I may speak to the concern that Mr Blackman mentioned, just because something has planning permission does not mean that it meets the functional requirements of the building regulations. If those buildings went up with combustible cladding on them, they do not meet the building regulations, full stop. Hopefully there are sufficient powers across the built environment to deal with that, and we would hope to see the Building Safety Regulator and others step in where needed.

There might be room for examining the implementation dates for the Bill, because there are some possible gaps. The Bill will only apply, I think, to buildings that were built before April ’22. There are some periods of time there, such as the possible 15-month gap between when the Building Safety Act came into force and when gateway 2 started, that might bear examination and would be good to look into. There was also an eight-month gap between the Bill coming into force and the review of the combustible cladding ban.

You might recall that there was a combustible cladding ban put in place for buildings over 18 metres; that was reviewed and it was clarified that it would apply from 11 metres, but there was an eight-month gap during which it might have been incorrectly perceived by some in industry—even though we would disagree—that it was acceptable to put combustible material on to those buildings. Even though we would say ultimately that it still does not meet the functional requirements, some may have misunderstood that, so it would be worth examining the timeframes in the Bill to make sure that that is okay.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

A one-minute question and answer from Bob Blackman.

[Bob Blackman]

Q You mentioned 129 buildings, I think, that are still to be remediated. Do you think the Bill, with the backstop, will enable that to happen, or are further measures needed?

Kate Green: There are two things: one is that we would like to see the Bill extended to cover defects that are not related to cladding or external walls; the second is workforce capacity. By that I mean capacity both in the regulatory sector—fire authorities, fire services, local authorities and other regulators—and in the construction sector. The tension that the Government are managing between meeting their house building targets, which we support, and getting existing buildings remediated in an industrial sector that is facing significant workforce pressures is a real concern to us.

[The Chair]

Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions this morning. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you, Kate, for your evidence.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Sarah Coombes.)